ArtBeat: Girl Scouts exhibit opens March 12

Girls Scouts centennial exhibit opens March 12 at the History Museum of Mobile. (Press-Register/Bill Starling)

MOBILE, Alabama -- A Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama exhibit titled “Celebrating 100 Years of Girl Scouting” will open March 12 at the History Museum of Mobile.

A reception from 6 until 8 p.m. will include current and former Girl Scouts, community leaders and many others with an interest in Girl Scouts, according to a GSSA news release.

All are invited to join the celebration for heavy hors d’oeuvres and a night of history. Tickets for the opening reception are $25.

The exhibit, on view through March 25, features “a journey through time with restored Girl Scout photos, vintage sashes, patches and newspaper clippings as well as mannequins dressed in traditional Girl Scout uniforms,” the news release states.

The March 12 opening coincides with the date of the first Girl Scout Troop meeting at which 18 girls led by Girl Scouts founder Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low in her hometown of Savannah, Ga.

Since then, Girls Scouts has grown to 3.7 million members and is the largest educational organization for girls in the world, the news release states:

“Girls Scouts initially came to the Gulf Coast area in 1916 but was short-lived. Girl Scouts re-emerged in Mobile in 1937 under the name Mobile Girl Scout Council. Over time, the local organization expanded and merged with other councils, realigning in 2007 to become Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama.”

GSSA now serves 30 counties in southern Alabama and has more than 9,000 registered Girl Scouts with an additional 2,500 volunteers, according to the release. “

Celebrating 100 Years of Girl Scouting” will feature large-format photographs from the early years of the organization in this area along with shadow-box displays of badges, pins and newspaper clippings showing the growth of Scouting throughout the decades.”

GiGi Baroco, archivist for Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama, says the shadow-box clippings reveal the service from Girl Scouts during wartime. “Most of this was during World War II,” she says. Other clippings feature themes of camping, national recognition and community service, the news release states,

The exhibit collection includes a Golden Eaglet recently donated to GSSA by Sarah Cobb Wilder, who became a Girl Scout in 1925. “Her Golden Eaglet and accompanying certificate is in pristine condition and was the highest award a Girl Scout could achieve at that time.” Wilder will attend the opening for the dedication of her contribution.

Tickets are available online at www.girlscoutssa.org/100.php, or at these locations: the History Museum of Mobile, 111 S. Royal St.; Robert S. Edington Law Office, 551 Church St.; Iberia Bank, 15 W. I-65 Service Road N. (between Dauphin Street and Old Shell Road; or Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama, 3483 Springhill Ave.

Author Rick Bragg (Press-Register file photo)

ArtNOTE: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Bragg will be honored with a special evening 5-9 p.m. Friday, March 9, at Centennial Hall on the campus of Faulkner State Community College in Fairhope. The event is sponsored by Page and Palette bookstore in Fairhope.

Tickets are $35 and include viewing of the new documentary “Alabama’s Rick Bragg: Out of the Dirt,” along with signed first-edition hardbacks of “The Most They Ever Had” and “The Prince of Frogtown,” compliments of Bragg and Page and Palette.

“Out of the Dirt” takes viewers the journey from the author’s childhood in Calhoun County through his days as a New York Times reporter to becoming the best-selling author of “All Over But the Shoutin,’” according to a bookstore news release.

In 2009, when accepting the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer, Bragg said he was honored to be among other Alabamians “who have helped establish this state as a place where good writers just seem to come out of the dirt.”

After the screening, Bragg will be presented with the Good Life Foundation’s Betty Joe Wolff Award to recognize his efforts in fighting illiteracy in Alabama, the news release states.

“Out of the Dirt,” directed by Alice Yeager and produced by Al Hammond, features cinematography by Awaken Films. The documentary was funded by the Alabama Humanities Foundation and had its premiere in September in Birmingham to a sold-out audience.

There will be two showings of the film at Centennial Hall. Jake Reiss with Alabama Booksmith will be selling two-DVD sets of the film the night of event.